Changqing addressed the monks, saying, “If I truly expound the vehicle of our school, then I should simply close the door to the Dharma hall. Therefore I’ll just say that in the inexhaustible Dharma there are no persons.” 1 PSC
As we continue to see one another in zenkai, or at Zoom sitting practice on weekday mornings, gardening once a month on a Saturday, one thing becomes clearer and clearer. No matter our current age and condition, we are all getting older. And here and there, one by one, without exception, we will all die. As much as we may wish otherwise, our bodies and those of our loved ones become susceptible to maladies not of our choosing. Meeting these calamities has become a large part of our work these days, for ourselves and for our friends. Some of us manage to do this with style and verve. Others of us — well, maybe not so much. A lot depends on the nature of the affliction but we all manage . . . we don’t have much choice, truth be told. And tomorrow will find us one and all, in the same situation. Or worse. That is, most calamities having to do with physical health in later life, tend not to change much or disappear without taking us with them.
Tao Wu and Chien Yuan went to a house to make a condolence call. Yuan hit the coffin and said, “Alive or dead?” Wu said, “I won’t say alive, and I won’t say dead.” Yuan said, “Why won’t you say?” Wu said, “I won’t say.” Halfway back, as they were returning, Yuan said, “Tell me right away, teacher; if you don’t tell me, I’ll hit you.” Wu said, you may hit me but I won’t say.” Yuan then hit him. (BCR Case 55)
Are you afraid of dying? Fear of death is built into our bodies naturally, without blame or any expectation to the contrary. Still, let’s look at it. Oddly enough, every time I approach this topic, I have to examine its opposite. That is, What is death? Um, the end of life? Well, what is life? OK, when I wake up in the morning, there is a world before my eyes and in contact with my body—a world of closed curtains, cozy rumpled bedding, sleepy cat, sleepy husband, daylight peeking from the east side of the house, through the slight opening in the bedroom door. Then I wonder, What day is it? What do I have to do today? And we’re off to the races . . . Until, that is, I try to get out of bed, and my body sends pain signals (No! don’t move! Don’t get up! Oh well, OK, if you have to get up, just roll . . . over sideways YIKES not like that, NO!—OK, yeah, fold up a little more, yup—and, and, and—stick a foot down. O-kay, now slither the other foot YIPES ow-ow-ow not that way! – other foot toward the floor. And finish getting vertical, or anyway, put weight on both feet.) This is life? A-yup.
There are zillions of possibilities for this day, but I’ll only actually do a few of them. There’s a mystery for you—how did I ever learn to do any of these things? How do I decide, for instance, whether to write on this talk or put it on hold some more? Because if I hunt down the facts, every single thing I do (including thinking about doing or not doing something) was trained into this organism that I call “me.” And the sense of “myself”—well, that was trained also. Whenever I consider this, there’s a dizzying sense of unreality. “I” am here, kind of—but from this angle, I’m more of a mystery than a solid thing. The ordinary notion that “I” am what responds when you call . . . well, that’s not untrue, but that is just a pattern of response, something trained in by causes and conditions. I can’t find a doer, an “I” for it, except in the sense that it’s a pattern of responding, a convention. And, it’s true, we do tend to get extraordinarily attached to our conventions, our habits. But that doesn’t make them any more “real” or findable.
Well, here’s the thing: if this “I” is a pattern of responding that was trained into a living thing, where (or who, or what) was that “I” before it was trained? Is it the feeling of the body before it is associated with a name? But I only learned to notice the “feeling of the body” when I was prompted, when I was taught to do so, when it was . . . important to someone else. Not that sensations weren’t there, but while I lived them, I didn’t notice them, as “something to be noticed” (an object—a material thing) until taught—by people, or by circumstances. Before I was trained to respond to notions of “you” or “I,” there were all sorts of sensations, experiences, going on, but we don’t even know how to talk about unspoken sensations—so at that time, not being trained, I couldn’t report them.
Tao Wu and Chien Yuan went to a house to make a condolence call. Yuan hit the coffin and said, “Alive or dead?” Wu said, “I won’t say alive, and I won’t say dead.” Yuan said, “Why won’t you say?” Wu said, “I won’t say.”
And if there is only ever a pattern of responding? Well then, the big question that remains is, who—or what—dies? You may already have noted that “A pattern of responding” is another construct, a concept, an explanation added after the fact of foot slithering toward the floor. It is no more “real” or “true” than other explanations. It is one way of looking at our situation.
On this topic, CW Huntington wrote:
No-self means that the appearance of an unchanging, individual agent who makes things happen is mere appearance, the construction of a mind infused with desire and fear. Behind the facade there is no such self, only the ceaseless, ungraspable stream of events that spontaneously emerge and disappear.2
We do this July retreat for the purpose of finding and doing our own practice—together. My zenkai may be about death; yours may be altogether different. It can be about finding a way of speaking truth, expressing creativity, responding to someone who lives in your neighborhood, or something else altogether. Here we are, students of Zen in the 21st century in the US. What does that mean? Meaning itself may not even be relevant, given that our entire universe is a “ceaseless, un-graspable stream of events.”
Lee once said:
Young or old, of sound body, or of creaking body, the ungraspable stream of events is now spontaneously emerging and disappearing. Seeking it doesn’t help, but we glimpse it when we forget to grasp for it. 3
And a contributor to Tricycle Magazine wrote:
There is no beginning. There is no end. No person can give you freedom. Freedom is the suchness of life; all gets swept away except for the deathless nature of tathata (suchness). This is enlightenment. This is true liberation.4
Remember Changqing’s declaration:
. . . in the inexhaustible Dharma there are no persons.
- Zen’s Chinese Heritage, A. Ferguson, p. 306
- Huntington, Jr., C.W. Seeing things as they are. Tricycle magazine Spring 2016.
- Shields, Lee. Private communication. July 7, 2024.
- Sy, Felicia Washington. On ‘Down by the Riverside’ Tricycle magazine online.